Scholastic warriors: Westwood High team competes for national title in Academic Decathlon

Westwood Regional High School was recently crowned as New Jersey's champion for middle-sized schools in the rigorous Academic Decathlon competition. This weekend brings a new challenge: seeing if the team can win the title of top scholastic warriors in the nation. “They’re working extremely hard,” said James Thomas, a math teacher who coaches the 18-member squad, known by its acronym WACADECA. “They got a taste of success last year and now they want more of it.”

The team left for Pittsburgh this week to compete in the U.S. Academic Decathlon national competition, which runs from Thursday to Saturday. It is facing off against teams in the medium-sized category from Idaho, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New York, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Wyoming."Many of these are repeat champs," the Westwood squad noted on its Facebook page. "We are the new kids on the block."

The Decathlon is a 10-event scholastic showdown that each year focuses on a new theme and curriculum, with this year’s competition focusing on technology and humanity, said Thomas.

The Academic Decathlon gantlet

It goes far beyond a simple test: Students deliver speeches – on a topic of their choice and on a topic they’ve never seen before. They also write essays, get interviewed by judges and take exams in art, economics, literature, math, music, science and social science. Each team also competes in a “Super Quiz,” where students take turns before a live audience solving challenges from every subject they studied over the past year.

The Westwood team is made up of nine alternates and nine starters, with the starters heading to Pittsburgh for nationals, said Thomas. The students will compete against peers from across the nation in matchups based on their grade point averages.

The work to prepare for the competition began last summer and accelerated around the start of the school year in September, said Thomas. That included study sessions at the Westwood borough community center on Saturdays for extra practice. The efforts paid off when the team won the state championship in March.

“That’s part of the reason we really did so well this year,” said Thomas. “They took a lot of the ownership themselves. They would be posting resource guides when I didn’t ask anybody to do it. They decided it themselves.”

The high school serves students from Westwood and Washington Township.

More: Never mind Adopt-a-Highway. This NJ town wants you to adopt a storm drain to fight flooding

Daniel Shotkin, a junior, served as a team captain this year, and Thomas said he "really motivated the team and kept them on track." Another junior, Aaron Zeiler, was the team’s MVP and the highest scoring student in the state, according to Thomas. Zeiler was the first-ever winner from Westwood High of the B. Franklin Reinauer Memorial Award, which goes the highest scoring academic decathlete in the state, the coach said.

No matter what happens at the championship this week, he knows his students can be proud of the effort they put in.

“They’re really pushing so I feel really good about it,” said Thomas. “This is a special group. I’ve had decathletes from previous years reach out to me and say that ‘this is incredible and ‘this was the dream.’”

Stephanie Noda is a local reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: noda@northjersey.com

Twitter: @snoda11

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Westwood HS kids vie for U.S. Academic Decathlon championship